Today was a lovely day with temperatures reaching the 60’s, so I decided today was a good day to get some groceries. I did a pickup for my parents on Thursday, but when I do theirs I do not like to go into the store. Maybe I am being overly cautious, but when I do theirs, I just go, pull into the spot, call into the store to tell them I’m ready, open the trunk, let them load it, tip them, and drive off. I then go home and put it on their porch, and hope I have not contaminated them.
So I headed off to Kroger, and on the way gave ole Mistermix a call to see how things were going up north. Things up there seem a lot like down here, tbh. Things are doing ok for now in WV. Despite our governor, Jim Justice, holding insanely bad press conferences where he utters absolutely inane gibberish, he has actually been doing the right thing. Schools closed down a few days before our first case, we had our first case and he shut down the restaurants and barbershops and what not, etc. He’s a buffoon, but at least he’s a buffoon who knows how little he knows, so he relies heavily on the medical advice of our experts. Which is good!
I’ve noticed the number of mask wearers is now about 60-75% in the store, which is also good. It’s not 100%, but still good. One perverse benefit of being in such a chronically depressed economic region is that we’re used to the economy being in the shitter and that many of us realize that if we catch the ‘rona, there isn’t going to be anyone rushing to our rescue. We’ll just drop dead, quietly, out of the national headlines, just like we do every day from black lung, diabetes, chemical spills, and opioid addictions, just like every time there is a war and we rush to volunteer. So people are somewhat taking things into their own hands.
Other than that, pretty uneventful. Picked up some nice ferns for the front porch, some meatless meatballs (on sale for 1.49) for dinner, and a general resupply. Playing some WoW tonight with my friends.
Nicole
My husband’s cousin, in OKC, called today and said there are not many wearing masks in the stores. Sigh.
I went for a run in Central Park this evening, and most of the folk were wearing masks, but a noticeable number were still not. It’s annoying, but I worry less outside than I would indoors. Our local grocery store won’t let you in without one.
rk
I went to Walmart and half the employees had their masks pulled down below their nose. I mean WTF! Why bother?
dmsilev
@Nicole: The guidance here in the LA area is “masks required inside stores/restaurants/etc., but optional if you’re out getting exercise and keep your distance from other people”. I’d say maybe half of the dog walkers/joggers/etc are masked at this point.
MomSense
All the Austin City Limits episodes are available on the PBS streaming service. We just watched Jason Isbell and now BB King. All the Great Performances episodes are also available. I’m going to have a look tomorrow.
JustRuss
Went out for a motorcycle ride, just before I got back to town I spotted two bald eagles soaring overhead. Pulled over and grabbed my binoculars. There was also a hawk in the area, occasionally they’d dive bomb each other. It was quite a show, against a pristine blue sky.
lamh36
Hey John…
did you see what they are doing so that Chump can speak at West Point
https://twitter.com/tripgabriel/status/1254176076663840768
JMG
In Lexington-Bedford, Mass. mask compliance well over 90 percent in grocery store, liquor store and most popular takeout pizza place. Many more people were out and about today, as it was nice here for the first time in a week and last time for a week, but distancing was universal. Of course it’s ever so much easier to do outside in a suburb.
Patricia Kayden
Lyrebird
Speaking of playing video games, I could use tech help, don’t know if anyone here has any ideas. Some one or some thing reset my apple eye dee password and then loaded Minecraft Realms on the family’s Minecraft account. Could be that we double clicked something, but it is not okay. No other devices are on my ID, and I am able to reset the password, but nothing I have Googled covers this, and I do not know what else I should do. Not cool to need to go back and force the password to change twice in one day due to something we did not ask for.
Martin
So, just balls. You had balls for dinner. Just own it, man.
Leto
@lamh36: This reminds me of the Air Force rules concerning hurricanes at Keesler AFB. All students and instructors (what I was) were essential personnel so had to shelter in place. Flash back to 2005 and Katrina. We recalled students, who were on leave as far away as Ohio, to shelter there at Keesler AFB… as Katrina was bearing down on the Gulf Coast. Part of the after action report the AF and DoD conducted changed the rules in several ways, but most important was: if the people are out of harms way, you don’t bring them back into the approaching apocalypse.
This is basically a repeat of that.
mad citizen
@lamh36: “To accommodate Trump’s sudden decision to speak at West Point, cadets will be called back, tested off campus, then isolated for 14 days in rooms with masks. They’ll eat in segregated groups. No decision on whether family members may attend.”
They are calling back 1,000 cadets for this, 14 days away from home, away from their families. I hope they all decide to vote in the fall–with extreme prejudice.
LuciaMia
I prefer to call it “Journal of the Plague Years.”
Martin
@lamh36: He’ll cancel because the optics won’t be what he wants. He won’t care that heaven and earth was moved to accommodate him.
Dorothy A. Winsor
At the Jewel grocery store on Thursday, everyone wore masks. When I’m out walking I don’t wear it if I’m by myself, and the weather has been so bad that I usually am. I have it with me though, and I wear it if other people are around. I find bicyclists aren’t very good about keeping distance on a trail. I suppose it’s hard for them to get off to one side, which is what you have to do.
senyordave
I’ve been watching a lot of TV this past month and a half, probably more than I watched in the previous 6 – 8 months. We just bought a winter place in Florida and came last week, and since the complex comes with cable and HBO I discovered I can get HBO at home in MD. I’ve never had HBO and between that and Amazon Prime there is a lot of good programming. Just finished the first season of True Detective with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, and I think it is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on TV. I’m one of those people who goes to the gym every day so its tough to be in so much. I have to get some discipline back and start running outside a few times a week, but it was easier in Florida since it was 75 degrees at 8 AM. Its been a cold spring in Maryland, and its only 40 degrees in the morning and my body can’t handle that.
Percysowner
I admit I have no idea how many people are using masks in Columbus, Ohio. All I have done is curbside pickup and no contact delivery. I also have 4 masks, so I’m prepared for when and if I ever enter a store again. Mask wearing on the delivery and pickup has been about 50% on the people who showed up
LuciaMia
@mad citizen: I wonder what fetid gumbo of words they will be forced to sit thru.
Mike in NC
I showed my wife a recent mundane newspaper article on how to cut your own hair during the pandemic, and said, “In a hundred years this damn thing will be worth a lot of money. A rare artifact from the infamous “Great Trump Pandemic of 2020″ that our grandchildren will treasure”. Too bad we never had any kids.
CaseyL
Here in Seattle the weather turned beautiful around mid-afternoon, so I treated myself to a walk in one of the nearby city parks, Carkeek.
It turned out to be more of an adventure than expected: I drove to the usual turn into the park and saw dozens of cars lining the street near one of the trailheads and people milling about. That made me miss the usual turn, dodging people and cars, so I kept going into another part of the neighborhood. At one point I decided, the heck with it, this is a pretty little neighborhood, I’ll pull over here. (I like walkabouts in nice neighborhoods looking at the houses and gardens.)
So I get out and start hoofing it down the road, and go maybe a quarter mile and see: just off the road, a trail! A little tiny discreet trail that if you didn’t live nearby you’d never know about. So I get onto the trail and maybe another quarter mile later there I am in Carkeek Park, maybe 50 yards from the parking lot I normally use. Cool!
The thing about Carkeek, it’s a very large park smack in the middle of a nice residential neighborhood, with entry trails all over the place (across from a grocery store here, next to someone’s driveway there) that are unmarked. I’ve been in that park a multitude of times and walked most of the trails, but there are obviously still a few I didn’t know about.
Got quite a nice workout, too, up and down a lot of hills and slopes.
There were a LOT of people out and about, all of them wanting to get Out!-of-the-House! on one of the nicest days we’ve had so far this year. Maybe 20% were masked (me being one of them); fortunately, folks were better about social distancing than they were about being masked. Everyone kept away from everyone else, except for families.
Leto
@senyordave:
I’ll just save you the trouble and tell you to skip season 2, go straight to season 3 of True Detecto.
Lavocat
Be well AND POST MORE OFTEN! And where the hell are all the pet pics? Seriously, you’re slacking off, dude.
lamh36
So aside from work, I don’t actually go out much anyway. The hospital where I work has been mandating that employee wear masks as they enter and leave the facility for at least 2 weeks now. Before masks were mandatory if there was exposure risk, like lab personnell testing positive, but as I said, 2 weeks ago it became mandatry for anyone walking around common areas of the hospital and the lab.
I’ve got hypertension and just flat out of shape so I already run hot, but that damn mask makes it even HOTTER in the lab when your surrounded by automated equipment and incubtors. So once I leave the hospital and going to the employee parking lot, I take the mask off as long as their isn’t too many folks also walking towards the parking lot.
Lavocat
@Leto: Ditto. Not sure what Season 2 was, but it wasn’t True Detective.
James E Powell
@Leto:
True Detective Season 2 is underrated. It suffered from following Season 1, which was a hall of fame series. I liked dark-side Rachel McAdams and at the time it was running, I was driving through
VernonVinci every day to and from work.dmsilev
I have to say, this is now one of my favorite instruction steps in a recipe:
(The LA Times Food section has been doing a “so now you have time to learn to cook” series for the past few weeks. This link was for Pancakes 101, and basically the instruction was “the first one will suck, so let the dog have it”.). Also, I’m not sure if “hangry” is an inadvertent typo or a deep truth on the nature of toddlers.
zhena gogolia
@dmsilev:
Hmm, that’s a Russian proverb. The first pancake (blin) is always a doughy mess.
schrodingers_cat
I went to Trader Joe this morning and everyone was wearing a mask. TJ was well stocked. They had everything on my last. A first since this started about a month and half a go. Also assembled a new composter. Sorted out assorted terracotta pots. Put out the patio table and chairs on the deck and then watered some seedlings that my neighbor gave us.
I also collected 7 signatures for Ed Markey’s nomination papers for the senate.
TheronWare
I went shopping at the local Stop n Shop and Whole Foods today and everyone was wearing a face mask.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
So, apparently Japanese media is reporting that Kim Jong Un is in a vegetative state after a botched heart surgery
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mad citizen:
that is really shameful
lamh36
@Percysowner: Same. I was actually doing grocery pickup before this COVID pandemic hit.
The only thing that has changed from before for me is there are MORE people doing grocery pickup instead of going in the store. So now it’s harder to reserve a pickup time unless you do it days sometimes a week in advance
Leto
@James E Powell: I’ll give you Rachel, but the rest of it… just burn it. Yes it did suffer from following an amazing S1, but man it was just absolute night and day difference. Writing was bad, acting was just… Vince Vaughn needs to stick with dick jokes and Colin Ferrel needs to not do TV. And Taylor Kitsch? Oh man… just… ooof…
CaseyL
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Worst of both worlds, then: not dead, not functional. If the report is true, I wonder if Little Sister kept everything quiet while she consolidated control over the Army.
Leto
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What’s shameful is Army leadership letting down their people like this. They could say no. They could stop this. But they’re not. The nation has entrusted their most precious resource to them and they’re failing.
John Cole
@James E Powell: Agreed 100%. I liked season 2.
dmsilev
@Leto: They should have done what basically all of the regular colleges and universities are doing: A virtual graduation ceremony. If Trump wants to address the graduates, fine, let him do it over a video feed.
debbie
@mad citizen:
Goddamn, that is just rude!
Gin & Tonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Boy, I’d hate to have been the surgeon who fucked up.
Robert Sneddon
Question about the West Point graduating class — are they now commissioned officers in the US military even though they’ve not yet graduated (the point of the ceremony under discussion)? Do they have a choice to become commissioned officers or can they remain civilians or resign any sort of commission they have somehow acquired?
I had a vague understanding that each officer’s commission had to be approved by Congress or something like that, or perhaps that only applies to the only Constitutionally mandated military service, the USN?
patrick II
@Lavocat. :
Season two’s Rachel McAdams’ athleticism surprised me. I had generally seen her playing romantic parts, but here she was running, shooting, fighting, and stabbing with real athleticism. So, I looked her up. It turns out she was a regional ice skating champion in Canada before deciding instead on big money and stardom.
debbie
@Percysowner:
Surprisingly, in my part of Columbus, most people were masked this morning when I ran my weekly Shopping Trip of Futility.
geg6
@senyordave:
I highly recommend Big Little Lies. Excellent. It’s the first thing I’ve seen Nicole Kidman in that I just sat dumbfounded by her acting. So much of it in her face. Just amazing. Never thought much of her at all before seeing her in that.
Raven
@Leto: It’s too bad because Lera Lynn went to UGA and is well known here and her music was buried by that shitty script and Vaughn’s awful acting.
Cleardale
@CaseyL: Well I just watched season two of Kingdom(Korean show) so I’m wondering if there is a pregnant wife around. I won’t say more due to spoilers.
Raven
Unorthodox is really interesting and Mrs America is too!
Raven
@Robert Sneddon: Yup, their young asses belong to the Green Machine.
CaseyL
@Cleardale: Kim Jong Un is married and possibly has three children – but they’re all minors. Very little information about his wife, who may or may not be a Dragon Lady ready to battle Little Sister on behalf of her kids.
Leto
@Raven: The music in all three seasons is really good.
Brachiator
People are adjusting. While out for a walk, I saw a mini caravan of cars headed up the street. In one of the lead cars, a masked young woman was poking up through the sunroof holding a bunch of balloons. In every other car, the drivers and passengers had masks. If people were driving solo, the mask was pulled down. Later I saw some teens socializing. One guy was sitting in a beach chair. Everybody was wearing masks and keeping social distance.
BTW, in the 90s in Southern California today, and Orange County beaches were open.
raven
@Brachiator: And Ventura.
Omnes Omnibus
@Robert Sneddon: Graduation from USMA confers a bachelor’s degree. After graduation, cadets are commissioned. They owe eight years of service, five of which is generally on active duty. As far as Congressional approval goes, let me ask this, in your country, does the Queen individually okay every officer who receives the Queen’s commission? One final note, in the US the army is the senior service as it predates the navy and even the Declaration of Independence.
Wapiti
Got a letter from the IRS today, letting me know that I received a direct deposit Economic Impact Payment. It was signed by Fred Trump’s loser son, Donald.
Since he’s not an employee of the IRS, I figure this is a campaign gimmick. Since he’s using official postage for private use, I expect Bob Barr will be right on it.
Uncle Cosmo
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Slacker. Over here, Agolf Twitler has been in a vegetative state for years & didn’t even need anyone to botch a pedicure.
raven
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): So now there are 2 world leaders. . .
columbusqueen
Well, I’ve been sick, so I got tested yesterday at OSU. It came back negative, woot! Guess I don’t have to fix a bleach & Lysol martini for myself after all.
Brachiator
@Wapiti:
Wow. So it’s not enough that Trump had his name added to the physical checks. He wants his people to know what their Dear Leader did for them.
chopper
@CaseyL:
i went for a run around green lake and right after the sun came out it started filling up pretty quick. dodging people started becoming a lot harder.
Chris Johnson
@Brachiator: I got one of those too. Ripped it in half, threw it in the recycles. I opened it because it said IRS, but could tell instantly that it was bullshit under the cover of IRS mail.
Leto
@columbusqueen: glad the test came back negative; stay safe out there!
SectionH
@Leto: Oh man… my Dad was at Keesler post WW2, way before I was born. He & my Mom had a little house on some antebellum place directly across the main highway (US 90?) from the ocean. He of course was on base before and through most of a big ass hurricane – this was before they named hurricanes. My mom was stuck in the little house alone for some days. I think at that point my Dad had finally gotten 12 hours off to sleep, and was crashed out in their bedroom. Mom was looking out the front window and watched a giant live oak in the yard start falling straight at her. I mean the thing was Huge. She was like I thought we gonna die. What saved her was that the ground was so saturated by that point that the tree was pulling up by the roots, which made it come down much slower that it might have. It caved in a lot of the roof, but the main beams held, and they both survived.
I’ve seen the lot where that happened, a long time ago now. It was just grass then. Doubt it’s not had some casino or something built on it for years.
catclub
Likewise in Mississippi goddam. Very few mask wearers. When Walmart employees are the only ones consistently wearing masks, not a good sign. I think the peak for masks was a few weeks ago.
people have the patience a of flea.
randy khan
I went to Lowe’s today and at least 95% of the people were wearing masks or some other face covering. And doing an okay job at social distancing, too.
Amir Khalid
Here in Malaysia mask-wearing in grocery stores is at 100%, because otherwise the security guards won’t even let you in. They also take your temperature with an infrared thermometer gun.
joel hanes
Dead thread, I suppose, but
I’m re-reading Brunner’s amazing 1972 sf dystopia The Sheep Look Up.
Astonishingly prescient. Really exactly the book for this moment in history.
If you read sf, and haven’t yet read this, do so.
In the book, what we now call the red states have elected a man with the demeanor of a game show host to the Oval Office. The current dysfunction of our media is depicted with almost perfect fidelity, as are the pathologies of late-stage capitalism. Multiple simultaneous inter-related environmental and public-health crises. People go about masked.
I’ll watch for the next open thread, and try to repeat this recommendation early on so people see it.
Another Scott
@joel hanes: Thanks for the pointer. I just put it on my phone (from the 3 volume collection, for only a couple of bucks more).
Cheers,
Scott.
SectionH
@joel hanes: Of course. I’ve read that and Stand on Zanzibar, and many more. But Brunner… well, yeah
And I won’t gainsay your recs, but I may add a couple of comments.
smedley the uncertain
@Brachiator: Shredded my letter with great vituperative vitriol.
Yeah, threads dead but had to say it.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
We all might wind up being vegetarian ?
Robert Sneddon
@Omnes Omnibus: OK, so right now they are NOT commissioned officers. That’s what I wasn’t sure of. As far as Her Majesty The Queen God Bless Her And All Who Sail On Her, yes she does actually sign off on all commissions in the British armed forces but it’s a rubber stamp operation, same as the Sovereign’s warrant for all serving police officers.
As for the US Army, the plan of the Founding Slaveowners was that a land army could be put together in a hurry if needed hence the militias cause in the 2nd Amendment but a navy requires a permanent establishment of ships, officers, shipyards etc. so it’s the only military organisation that’s mentioned as being required (and funded) in the Constitution. Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children come along with the package.